The first decades of this 21st century have presented a series of urgent problems: climate change, biodiversity loss, decrease of natural resources (clean water, oil, forests, fishing stocks), waste accumulation. These problems pose a challenge to unsustainable technology development, production and consumption patterns developed in socio-technical systems such as energy, mobility and infrastructure, agriculture, food production, and waste management. These issues reinforce the questions about the governance of scientific-technological decisions, the design of models and policies, of new regulatory sets, and the orientation of available capacities towards solving current global challenges.

In the STS studies, the issue of sustainability gained relevance, especially within the ‘transitions to sustainability’ research agenda. Some theoretical approaches have even influenced policy agendas of different governments. However, knowledge production on this topic has been relatively uneven between the Global North and South, and the exchange between main challenges, knowledge production, and experiences has been seldom.

How these transitions towards sustainability differ across countries, cultures, productive and technical domains? How different actors are brought together in these processes of socio-technical change?

Open panel paper submissions should be in the form of abstracts of up to 250 words. They should include the paper’s main arguments, methods, and contributions to STS. A specific mention to paper’s relation to track’s themes and topic is required. Please, do mention, if any special technical requirement will be needed.